A
fish-out-of-water comedy with a surprising amount of violence
and plot and characters and drama and karaoke and… Don't like
the weather? Hang around a few minutes.

Review
by RainDog:

Kye
Doo-Sik (Jung Joon-Ho) has a problem. He's a good gang boss,
having quickly risen through the ranks, but when a higher
position opens up he finds himself hitting a glass ceiling.
Unless he can at least finish high school, his boss tells
him, he'll never get beyond his current position. It seems
that most of the bigger bosses had at least some college education.
So off to a private high school he goes.
The gang story in My Boss, My
Hero is largely ignored except for a big gang-fight ending.
Instead, the focus is on the story inside the school. One
teacher is tough but fair, while another teacher is very competent
but sexually harassed. One student is a bully, another is
the class bitch, and yet another needs a scholarship to go
to college (the class bitch's family influence stands in the
way). There's even a transsexual for comic relief. Doo-sik's
two lieutenants (one an idiot, the other competent) support
their boss from the sidelines and frequently get entangled
in the situation. At first, Doo-sik plays the role of the
student to the hilt, even allowing himself to be the victim
of the bully and otherwise taking all the abuse the Korean
school system has to offer (which is apparently a lot if this
movie is to be believed). Then, it's time for him to start
beating everyone up.
For a comedy, there's a great deal
of violence. Not just slapstick, either, but full beat-down-bloody,
trip-to-the-hospital violence. Doo-sik takes his lumps and
dishes them out frequently to his idiot sidekick, who takes
it out on the people below him. The teachers smack around
the students and are in turn smacked around by the parents
and gang members. The women in the movie are smacked around
just as much as the men. I wish I could justify all this violence
as having a point, but it doesn't really come off that way.
It's just violence, and frequently surprising.
Despite this, My Boss, My Hero
plays like an entire TV season of Asian school comedy/drama
compressed into 98 minutes. There are many side characters,
each with their own personality quirks, and many are fleshed
out from one-dimensionality with a dark secret or two. The
main plot is frequently buried under all the side-plots and
scenes of no importance. The direction is workman-like, with
very few frills or embellishment. There's a least two or three
times when everyone criesdramatically. And, there's
no question that everything is going to work out in the end.
Overall there's an embarrassment
of plot, which might explain why the first half of the filmas
they set up all the basic characters and conflictsdrags
a little. What follows is a mishmash of filmmaking styles,
with short scenes that last only a minute or two each. For
every scene that's genuinely engaging or funny, there's one
that forces the story forward. The wild card is Jung Joon-Ho
as the lead. Having appeared in only a few films prior to
this, he nonetheless possesses a good range of emotion and
some screen presence and charm. High school student Doo-Sik
is meek and confused; crime boss Doo-Sik is cool, tough and
competent. Most of the other actors are good as well, even
if many of them are stuck with monochrome characters. Furthermore,
I'd be remiss to my Y-chromosome if I didn't point out that
there are a lot of pretty women.
Still, this is not really a good
movie. It's all over the place in terms of plot, pacing and
tone, and tries to do way too much in its allotted running
time. However, it's not a bad movie to watch. Taken piecemeal,
there's good humor, good acting, enjoyable fights, pretty
actors, and a very odd look into Korean pop culture. (Raindog
2003)